Jaime Rush - Dragon Awakened

She crouched, but the smoke drew closer to the floor. Soon it would fill the entire room. She readied the knife, held at her thigh and out of sight. One shot. That’s all she had because there was no going back in the den. Another coughing fit seized her, and she gripped the edge of the granite counter to keep her balance. All the while, she watched the orb come closer, taking advantage of her weakened condition.

Like a sentient thing. An evil thing.

Sucking in a breath, she snapped upright and threw the knife. Arcs of electricity danced along the blade as it plunged into the orb. While it tried to eject the knife, she grabbed a pot from the hanging rack. Like a baseball batter, she swung her whole body into throwing it. She knocked the orb against the wall and dashed back into the foyer.

Sirens pierced the air. Someone had called the fire department. Thank God.

Or maybe not. Would the orb hurt the firefighters?

She couldn’t see it as she dared a glance back while racing for the door. It flew open, crashing against the wall. Two firemen stood in the opening, clad in protective gear.

“Anyone else in here?” one asked her.

“My uncle!” She pointed, and at that moment, the entire wall where he lay collapsed in flames.

The force of it jerked her backward. No, that was one of the firefighters grabbing her as they retreated onto the front porch. She searched for the orb even as they scrambled to their feet. One firefighter led her farther from the house. She was a limp doll, all of her attention on the hellish nightmare come to life. Flames shot out through gaps in the roof and every window. If she’d still been inside, she’d be dead.

One of the men ushered her to a fire truck. A second truck pulled up, spewing men and equipment. Medics treated the small burn on her forehead, while all she could do was cough and look for the orb.

Had it purposely destroyed evidence? Yes, she was sure of it.

Orb. She’d heard that word before, in the stories Mon created for her when she was a child: a hidden world of magick, with angels and people who turned into dragons. Magick with a k at the end, spelled differently because it wasn’t the illusion type. The sorcerer-like Deuces could make orbs, instilling an intention like spy or fry.

She started shaking with the thoughts and questions bombarding her as she watched streams of water trying to tame the flames. The sounds of pumps, men shouting instructions, and spraying water filled the air. The answers were in the envelope, and it was burning away.

The Book of the Hidden

The white dove’s alarmed coos drew Garnet to the window of her turret bedroom. “What’s the matter, Opal? ’Tis not like you to be so fitful.”

She heard the sound then, far from the usual noises of the immense forest that surrounded the castle. Her gaze riveted upon what looked like black oil running along the ground, pouring around the trees as it advanced. Opal flew off with a distressed warble. Garnet knew of the dark magick in the kingdom, the creatures and dangers hovering beyond the environs of her safe little world. Her parents called it the Hidden.

As it reached the edge of the forest, the “oil” materialized into soldiers, coming faster than any normal humans could. She heard a grunt below her. One of their guardsmen fought a man bearing black horns and armor that resembled the beetles in the garden. Those horns stretched out like snakes and plunged through the guardsman’s chest. He dropped with a gasp.

She spun from the window, intending to run to her parents’ chamber. Footsteps pounded down the stone floor outside her room, and the door was flung open. Her father was still in his dressing robe, terror on his face. “I have inadvertently brought great peril to our land. You must hide, must—”

A clawed hand reached out and pulled him out of sight. “Leave her be!” Her father’s voice echoed in the great hallway.

She ran to the doorway to help him but came up short as the kind of man-beasts she’d just watched below rushed up to block her. They bore blood on their armor, and she knew, somehow, that it was her parents’. And, by the glitter in the men’s eyes, she also knew her blood would soon join it.

A scraping sound from the window behind her drew the startled gazes of the men. She dared turn to see what frightened them, these evil murderers. The sight of the creature sliding soundlessly to the floor on its clawed feet stole her breath.

A black Dragon, the size of a large horse, opened its fierce mouth and bared its fangs. It blew out not fire, as she’d read in the legends, but a black smoke that shot toward her. She would die with dignity, she thought, raising her chin. She would not cower, would not—

The stream of smoke passed her, knocking the three men back into the hallway. Their guttural screams echoed in the stone hallway and then grew silent.

The Dragon had saved her from them. Before she could thank it, it rushed forward and grabbed her with its talons. They scratched but did not puncture her skin as the beast pulled her against the cool scales of its chest and flew out the window.

Despite Ruby’s exhaustion, grief and terror kept ripping her from sleep. Well before dawn, she was scouring the Internet for stories about ball lightning. Turned out, ball lightning was a mysterious phenomenon having various shapes and colors. Though it could melt metal, it passed through windows and even screens without causing a bit of damage. It rarely killed a human, and nowhere did she find an account of one chasing down or lancing someone.

And what about the knives that seemed to exude some kind of energy…and affected the orb?

She’d told the lieutenant about the freak bolt of lightning from the storm, omitting most of the bizarre stuff like how it tried to keep her from escaping. Not that he’d have believed her anyway. Mon had said something about magick and Rule Number One, whatever that was.

Had Mon been rambling from shock? He’d been lucid enough to mention the envelope he’d told her to retrieve should anything ever happen to him. She figured it involved inheritance issues or business matters. That he’d mentioned it as he suffered an agonizing death meant it was way more important. Was there a chance it survived? Doubtful, but she had to try to find it. She also needed to find the Book of the Hidden that Mon kept in his office. While she had treasured the stories like a chest of jewels as a child, she outgrew them in her early teens and could only remember the essence of them.

The thought of going back to his house chilled her. What if the orb was there or the person who’d sent it? Had it chased her because she was a witness? Probably. How much did this Sin Tag know about her?

She had searched for variations of that name, too, thinking it was a company or government agency. No luck. Maybe SINTAG was a top-secret project and the orb some superweapon. Yeah, that made sense, except…how would her uncle get involved with something like that?

She pulled on old jeans and a T-shirt, stopping short at her reflection in the mirror over her dresser. A lock of singed hair curled in tiny spirals over her bandage. She lopped off the burnt portion, which made one chunk of hair shorter than the rest, so she evened them out.

Ruby called Nevin on the way to let him know she wouldn’t be in. She’d given him the freak bolt of lightning story last night.

How did her grandfather fit into this? She had vague memories of awkward conversations with him, a man obviously not used to talking with children. Then waking up at Brom’s after the boating accident, a gash in her head and no memory of anything that had happened after she’d been knocked against the cabin’s doorframe. Brom broke the bad news about her parents in a pained, soft voice.